East midlands

If at first you don't succeed, approach the Government Office (Amber Valley)
In Derbyshire, CPRE volunteers looked at the first draft of Amber Valley Borough Council's local plan and found that it paid little attention to the government policies on housing. The volunteers were worried about a few things:

• There was no urban capacity study
• New housing numbers were in excess of need and above Derbyshire structure plan requirements
• The housing density was below the minimum level set out in government policy and there was a very low brownfield target
• There were proposals for building housing on greenfield and Green Belt sites, unjustified in the light of the lack of investigation of building at higher densities and on brownfield land

Meetings with officers at the local authority showed that they had no intention of changing the policies. So CPRE raised its concerns with the Government Office of the East Midlands, which wrote to the local authority, instructing it to rewrite over 80 policy proposals and telling the authority to:

• Reduce the housing numbers, having allocated 400 more than required
• Comply with minimum density figures
• Withdraw all the Green Belt allocations and make no changes to existing Green Belt boundaries
• Provide urban capacity study figures to justify greenfield proposals
• Increase the brownfield targets

Shared lanes help more enjoy the countryside (Nottinghamshire)
Thanks to its good relationships with county council planning officers, and its willingness to not let go of an idea it believed in, CPRE Nottinghamshire has succeeded in getting two lanes in the county designated as Quiet Lanes.

Landcroft Lane and Hungary Lane, parallel lanes climbing up a small hill and leading out of the village of Sutton Bonington, each no more than a mile long, were designated in the summer after many years of campaigning effort.

John Gillespie, a transport volunteer with the branch, recalls that the work began with the branch conducting traffic surveys to get an indication of the extent of the problem of speeding on the county's rural roads. It approached the county council with its idea and then worked with the council's officers to assess the viability and support for Quiet Lanes.

After arriving at a list of possible lanes, the council and the branch contacted parish councils to see what support there was for the idea and from that chose two lanes. They created and distributed an explanatory leaflet to all the villagers and consulted with them several times so they could understand the issues and learn of the project's progression.

While the lane designation was a long time in coming, John says that the council was very helpful; it's just that the work wasn't high on its list of priorities and it was very cautious and wanted to be sure there would not be any negative safety implications with this designation, he says.

Local authorities are able to designate country lanes as Quiet Lanes in rural areas, under the Transport Act 2000. Quiet Lanes are designed to encourage car drivers to respect other roads users, such as walkers, cyclists, horse riders and the mobility impaired.